Erebus - Level 1: Main Excavation

Erebus - Level 1: Main Excavation is the first level of Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil. After the player picks up the Artifact, Hell invades the UAC base again and the player has to stop the invasion. The player receives the first weapons: pistol, shotgun, machine gun, and the new weapon: the grabber. The only enemies are imps, and the Forgotten Ones, a new enemy that replaces the lost souls from the original game.

Summary
The game begins with a cutscene which says that roughly one year after the events of the original game an unidentified signal was picked up from the abandoned UAC base on Mars. The UAC decides to resume the Mars research program, under the lead of Elizabeth McNeil.

Roughly a year after that, Red Team, a Marine unit, is seen investigating one of the ancient ruins on Mars, guided by McNeil through a videolink. They stumble upon passage blocked by rubble, but blow it up with a power charge. Then they enter a large room with a bizarre ancient Martian architecture. After passing through it, one of the marines (the player character) enters a chamber with a strange artifact. When he touches the Artifact, the whole area around him explodes with light and all the other marines get disintegrated instantly. The cutscene then shows the Maledict waking up from the sleep and realizing that the Artifact has been taken. He then summons the three Hell Hunters to retrieve the Artifact from the player and unleashes the hellspawn to kill every human in the base, and thus the second Hell invasion occurs.

Meanwhile, the marine loses his consciousness for some time due to the massive quake caused by the Hell invasion. When he wakes up, he finds out that everyone is calling for help. The marine makes his way to a large transport conveyor. McNeil contacts him, and says he must make his way to her location with the Artifact. The first step is to find a way to the excavation elevator and reach the second level of the Erebus complex. The marine powers up the large conveyor by removing the power cell from one of the generators and inserting it into the generator near the conveyor, and ascends it. After going through several chambers and hallways, while fighting Forgotten Ones and imps, the marine finds another, dying marine with a grabber who successfully manages to grab an imp's fireball and throw it back at the imp, killing it. The dying marine dies and the player marine acquires his grabber.

After going through some more chambers, the marine finally reaches the elevator that takes him to the next level.

Objectives

 * Excavation Elevator
 * Gain access to Excavation Elevator.

Areas

 * Ancient Ruins
 * Excavation Hall
 * Lift Depot
 * Ancient Ruins (2)
 * Tunnel Access
 * Central Excavation
 * Ancient Ruins (3)
 * Elevator Access

Characters

 * Elizabeth McNeil
 * Marines
 * Dying Marine
 * Malcolm Betruger (inside Maledict's mouth, and cutscene only)

PDAs

 * Personal. From the start.

Video disks

 * MARS: Mission Goals & Safety. From the start.
 * AM3 Series Portable Power Plant. Found in Excavation Hall, on a large brick.

Enemies
The enemy count on Nightmare is the same as on Veteran. There are no changes in enemy amount in the BFG Edition.

Items
The item count on Nightmare is the same as on Veteran, except the med kits are absent. There are no changes in the amount of items in the BFG Edition.

Note: the player also has flashlight, pistol, and 48 bullets for the pistol from the start.

Secrets

 * There are items located on top of small construction platforms throughout the level. The platforms can be climbed from the sides like ladders.
 * In the first passage of Ancient Ruins, the player can notice a small raised elevator with a med kit and shells on top of it, but they seem inaccessible. However, if the player returns here after removing the nearby power cell, the lift will be lowered, allowing the player to pick up the items.
 * As soon as the player enters Excavation Hall, they will see a bottomless "abyss" on the left. However, there's a very thin ledge which leads behind the wall on the left that the player can walk on and find shells and health there.
 * When ascending the transport conveyor, roughly halfway through the player can jump on a rock ledge to find an armor suit.
 * In Tunnel Access, before going down the spiral staircase, there is a hole in the wall covered by two boxes which can be removed using grabber the player has just acquired and the health and armor there accessed.

Trivia

 * This level has its own title screen, just like all the other maps from the expansion, but it is never seen in the game (aside from a small thumbnail in Load Game menu), due to the game showing a plain loading bar on back screen instead of the proper loading screen, since it is considered to be an intro level.
 * This level is called Site One: Main Excavation on the Xbox version of the game.
 * The level contains several out-of-bounds areas which can be explored with the "noclip" cheat, seen during the opening cutscenes: the ancient ruins where the Artifact was found, the control room in which Elizabeth McNeil was seen, the Martian teleporter, and the region of Hell in which the Maledict and the Hell Hunters were seen.